Coffee and a Collar

Turn left at the Baptist Church

Mortal pride and earthly glory,sword and crown betray our trust;what with care and toil we fashion,tow’r and temple, fall to dust.
(from the hymn All my hope on God is founded)

Two blocks up the road from my house is a large, five street intersection. One corner boasts being the original site of the Dekalb Farmer’s Market. Another was home to my favorite thrift store. The center of the intersection was the Baptist Church. As an undergraduate at Agnes Scott College, this was one of the landmarks that marked the arrival to my college town, the return to school, the promise of growing up. Maps and I have never gotten along so well, but landmarks I can manage. Turn left at the Baptist Church and then go two blocks more, towards the old car dealership…those are words I can understand.

I’ve known they were going to tear it down. We’ve been at war with Wal-Mart for years. And when we finally lost, and as the congregation of the Baptist Church continued her decline, the future quickly became apparent. The once quirky intersection where the bowling ally, the local pub and the fabric store all took up residence would become just another corner with a Wal-Mart and a generic strip mall.

And yet. It took them weeks, maybe even months, to prepare the church site for demolition. Like they were preparing a body for burial. They took it down in such small bite size pieces, almost with care–a gathering room here, a kitchen there. Still the front stood proudly, the sanctuary and her steeple. In the final days, everything was gone, save those very front walls. The very last days, in the broken out windows, amid the rubble, someone appeared. Dressed head-to-toe in black, the body could be seen dancing or protesting, no one is really sure. It’s the stuff of neighborhood debate. I heard it was a ninja (really! that was a rumor!). Another heard an artist. Another still a film student making a film. Whoever it was, someone noticed the transformation, the final stages before her complete demise.

On the last day, all that was left was a single rectangular structure–walls with a steeple. As they started to work, tearing down the steeple, she would not go without a fight. It took bending and contorting the piece before it would give way, anchored so well to the old brick, the steeple itself seemed to lift its dying breath in protest. And then it was gone. The rest came down quickly. Nothing left to stand for, once the steeple gave way.

The rubble was cleaned up in less than a day, a stark contrast to all time it had taken to get there. And now, for a pause that I imagine won’t last long, it sits barren, an empty lot.

The first few times I drove by it, I literally got lost. Not for long, but I lost my bearings. Turn right at the church, then you’re almost home. That’s the familiar way of travel. And suddenly that compass point was gone and I found myself having to shift, to adjust my own markers and map. But now the emptiness has become its own marker. My eyes have shifted to meet the space and recognize it for what it is. And in time I will again adjust, to recognize the ugly strip mall that will go in it’s place as the new landscape of home.

Less than a year ago, on my last day of work at my church in the foothills of the Northeast Georgia Mountains, I packed up my office and turned in my keys. The rain had stopped and I looked up. As if a gift from the Creator, there was a rainbow pouring over the steeple. The doors always open, I walked into the church, one last time, to say goodbye. I sat in the old rickety wooden pews and looked out over the pines as the day turned to night. I sat in the dark–I don’t know how long–and sobbed. Here, in these walls, had been my home. Not for forever, but for a time. They echoed with Eucharists and healing prayers, with funerals and baptisms, with laughter and with intimate confessions and the promise of absolution. Choirs had sung and the organ had played, often off key and with missed notes and still God was praised. Here I had stood and told the congregation that someone they loved had died or that someone they didn’t yet know, but already loved, had been born. Here I stood and blessed, broke and shared God with people. All of it, etched in the bones of that place just as it is etched into me.

I don’t grieve the Baptist Church–not really. It wasn’t mine, save a familiarity, a comfort driving home. But I grieve for those who lost it. They will find and make new walls, for, as we all know, the Church is not the building, the Church is her people. And yet. They are the places that shelter us, that teach us, that frustrate us, that encourage us. They are the walls that stand when we sometimes can not. Until they can no more.

I was touched by your sadness, both of your leaving your church and the tearing down of the other church building. Even though they say that church is the people, sacred places of worship hold and retain our prayers and our memories.

Remember those 50th anniversary pictures I shared with the group from “H”? Because we chose to renew our vows in the old chapel at Grace Church, I felt the presence of the saints of ages past anchoring us there.

I know that we had other options, like renewing our vows at the beach, or in a park etc. but I wanted to renew our vows in that old stone church with the stain glass windows. I guess at heart, while I call myself progressive, tradition still becons me to old sacred sites.

I get it. The first church where I served as rector, people would say (because it was true) “the church is so beautiful!” and I would respond “it is. The building is nice too.” And so I understand in a profound sense that the building is not the church–the people are. But you are also right, the sacred sites are sacred for a reason. The bones, the walls, have memories too, I hope.